Tempus Fugit
by Shaydewalker
Summary: Non HBP/DH compliant. Time travel fic. The war is over, and Harry Potter has nothing left. When he finds a ritual in some of Luna's old things, he jumps at the chance to change history for the better. This time, the Ancient and Noble Houses will be ready. H/Hr Ha/T others.
1. Chapter 1

So, for those of you fortunate (or unfortunate, I'm not sure yet) enough to stumble across this fic be aware that this is my first Harry Potter fic. Hopefully I can avoid the more glaring mistakes made by writers new to the series, but no promises. If I screw something up in a spectacular enough fashion, leave me a message and I'll try to correct it.

Fair warning, I don't like Ron, and I have very ambivalent feelings about Ginny. As a result there is likely to be a certain amount of Weasley bashing once one or the other makes an appearance. Also I find Albus to be senile at best; you don't want to hear about the 'at worst.' Finally, I've found that the last two books in J.K.'s series aren't worth the paper they're printed on. Frankly, in terms of this fic, they have been entirely disregarded save for interesting and/or useful plot concepts. (Ex. There are no hallows in this fic)

In case it wasn't clear yet, I own nothing. I am simply a starving college student playing in other people's sandboxes.

XXXXX

Tempus Fugit

Chapter One

Harry stumbled out of the still smoking circle of grass and promptly tripped over the hem of his robes. Given that mere minutes before an observer would have been able to clearly see his dragon hide boots peeking out from under the lower edge, this was a cause of some concern. In fact, now that he had stopped to consider it, the fact that there was a certain amount of extra space in the aforementioned boots was troubling as well. Giving one last cough, Harry looked down at himself.

"Oh . . . this will be a bother, won't it?" he asked no one in particular as he took in his body's general appearance. Assuming that his clothing hadn't grown or something else equally strange as a result of the particularly reckless piece of magic he'd just performed, it appeared he'd lost something like a foot of height. Add to that the fact that his voice sounded odd to his own ears . . .

Alright, so his little trip had created problems. It wasn't like he was entirely unprepared to have to play catch as catch can with the consequences. He retrieved his wand, carefully tightening his holster to a snug fit in the process, and wordlessly cast an identification charm the Unspeakables had come up with to identify casualties on himself. The results were moderately surprising. His name was as expected, so were things like eye color, number of teeth, and the distance between his nostrils (though why the Unspeakables felt such information was necessary was beyond him). His age and height, though . . . he was fairly certain that he had not been a hundred fifty-seven and a half centimeters tall at age twelve. For a moment the part of his brain that liked to channel Hermione woke up and began to speculate about temporal regression and the effects of improved nutritional status on an earlier body-form before the rest of his consciousness bludgeoned it back into silence.

A second incantation and wand flick requested a situation report from the universe. Harry had cast the charm several dozen times before and the report always came back in seconds. This time it took more than five minutes, and the effort left him gasping. October twenty-fifth of the year 1981, which meant that the Fidelius was already up. For a moment Harry stood perfectly still before giving in to the urge to blast something.

A tree several meters in front of him fragmented as the _Bombarda_ hit it. He cursed quietly but inventively for several moments. The damned spell had been supposed to drop him off in mid-September so he'd have more than a month to prepare for his showdown with Voldemort. That should have been more than adequate time to replace everything he'd brought along as party favors in case something about the trip through space-time had irreversibly scrambled something important about their function.

Now he barely had enough time to make sure they all still worked properly. Which lead to another problem. The original plan had involved an all-out physical and magical assault on old Snake Face supported by Harry's expertise in several accessory fields of magic. Just based on what had happened to his height, the circumstances he had depended on for such an attack to be viable were profoundly unlikely. Which meant plans A, B, and C were out the proverbial window. Harry let his eyes slip closed and began to plan.

XXXXX

Twelve hours later, Harry was still trying to come up with an idea that might actually work, though by that time he'd managed to sort out his trunk and get the tent he'd brought along set up and warded. Finally, Harry decided that what he was trying simply wasn't going to work, "It'd almost be easier to list everything that won't work!"

Which, now that he thought of it, wasn't a bad idea at all. At the very least it would help him focus on the task at hand instead of his general level of pissedoffedness.

_So, _he considered, _given what happened to my reflexes, the sword is out. _Which sucked. Really it did. Even though he'd been able to acquire the most expensive bit needed to form the blade himself, he'd still had to shell out the equivalent of two and a half million pounds to convince the goblins and dwarves to work together long enough to forge it for him.

Now and for the next year or two, that investment was absolutely worthless; until he could work back up to his previous level of strength and readjust his muscle memory for the changes in his size and balance the ninjato was nothing more than an expensive conversation piece. Likewise the matching gauntlets wouldn't fit until he grew back into them. That, in turn, meant no spell deflection or redirection. Harry grimaced in disgust at the realization. He'd have to shift his entire strategy to compensate for his reduced defensive abilities.

_At least the robes are undiminished basilisk hide, _he considered thankfully. He'd already used the fact that they were attuned to his magic to shrink them enough to fit properly on his smaller frame. The hooded robes were the best armor available on the planet and the way they were crafted meant that they covered him from shin to crown and exposed only his eyes, hands, and feet. _Too bad the boots are dragon hide. I _like_ those boots and it'll be two or three years before I can wear them again. _Same as anything else he owned made of the material. Unlike the special basilisk hide his robes were made of, dragon hide resisted any and all spells placed on it. As a result, he couldn't adjust the size to fit his newly shrunken self.

_Which reminds me, I can take my animagus abilities off the list too,_ Harry recalled regretfully. The same general situation applied to his self-transfiguration as it did to his bladework. His mind remembered the specific changes it was required to make to a body that no longer existed. He'd very nearly have to start from scratch, aside from knowing his form at least.

And if all that wasn't enough, his magical core was only slightly larger than it had been when he was twelve the first time. And of course he had his runes, for what good they would do him.

All together it meant that Harry wouldn't be able to simply charge in and overwhelm Voldemort with superior power and techniques. Which, again, sucked.

"So, I can't be a Griffindor," he said aloud, speaking to no one in particular, and, finally, a smile slid across his face as he remembered the sorting hat's words to him on his first day at Hogwarts lo those many years ago. "Looks like I'll just have to be a Slytherin."

XXXXX

Harry remained where he was, huddled under his father's invisibility cloak as close as he could get to the house his parents had lived in, or rather, given the games he'd played with temporal mechanics and causality, the house they _still _occupied.

Though since night had fallen and All Saints Day was mere hours away that might still be subject to change if things didn't go as they had in his own past. He'd spent the occasional hour in the last few weeks wondering if he'd stepped on a blade of grass wrong and insured that Voldemort would simply use Wormtail's position as secret keeper to ignore the Fidelius charm instead of arrogantly tearing it down like he had before._ Or is that 'would have done?' 'will do?' _Harry once again concluded that there needed to be an entire tense devoted to properly describing interactions and subjective viewpoints resulting from temporal manipulation.

Reflexively, Harry's hand slid to the wand holster on his wrist and checked the straps for tightness. When he realized he was fidgeting, he immediately forced his hands to stop before giving a small shrug and going back to inspecting the gear he'd carefully selected for this mission. Just as his left hand had checked the holster on his right wrist, so too did his right hand check the holster on his left wrist.

The three perfectly balanced Goblin-forged throwing knives were the only physical weapons he felt comfortable enough with using in his younger body to bother carrying. He'd carefully practiced with them almost constantly for two days to adjust his muscle memory so that he could draw them safely. Since all three of the knives had been impregnated with Basilisk venom, they were far more effective than a standard throwing blade. On the other hand, a simple slip while catching one of the blades from his quick-draw holster could kill him just as dead as a Killing curse to the face.

On the other hand, if he could remain unseen long enough, a single scratch from one of the knives would be enough to put Tommy-boy in a shallow grave. Not even the powerful dark rituals he had performed on himself would allow him to survive with the venom of a thousand year old Basilisk circulating through his veins.

Immediately afterwards, his hand dropped to the boxy potion holder on his right hip. Just like his robes, the combat holder was made of undiminished Basilisk hide and attuned to his magic so that he, and only he could open it. Of course the more unstable concoctions had been rendered worthless by overexposure to the concentrated magic his trip back in time had created, but several of the more subtle brews had survived intact. _And one never knows when one might need a smokescreen or a _glacis _potion to alter the field of battle. _Distractions, visual or otherwise were one of the few ways he'd managed to force Snake Face onto the ropes back uptime. The advantages that his constructed body gave, or rather, had given him could be turned to disadvantages. That, and there was just no downside to having a stockpile of healing potions on him at all times. _Just wish I'd had enough time to brew immolation, asphyxiation, and explosive potions._ Those hadn't survived the trip. On the other hand, the custom charm work on the holster had vanished them before they went off _inside _their containers. He was willing to take the good with the bad in that particular case. He didn't have Boom-in-a-bottle to throw at the Dark Lord. He also wasn't a finely dispersed cloud of suspended particulate matter. Fair trade.

The last bit of his gear was tucked into a socket on his belt on his left hip. It constituted his Gone To Hell plan. It was, in fact, how he'd managed to defeat the older and nastier Voldemort uptime once and for all and he really hoped he didn't have to use it here. It would constitute a huge advantage if Voldemort somehow managed to regain a body before he could manage to destroy all of Snake Face's Horcruxes. Besides, what the Dark Lord didn't know existed couldn't be thrown at his friends and allies.

The containment system had been designed by Luna and was vibrantly red and white with a self shrinking feature built into the button on the front. She'd also been kind enough to build it like a grenade rather than a traditional containment ward that one had to be standing practically on top of to open. It had gathered a lot of attention from professional Curse breakers even though more than half the muggleborns that looked at it broke into semi-hysterical laughter.

Harry couldn't help but smile at some of the memories. Some of his last truly good memories before everything had gone directly to hell. For a few minutes Harry allowed his attention to wander. When he sensed the Fidelius fall less than a hundred yards away it was almost a shock.

Harry concentrated on keeping a lock on the area where he'd felt the chain failure of the wards as he ran towards the location of the newly revealed Potter home. He rounded one last corner and had to suppress the urge to swear. In contrast his thoughts were almost calm. _I wonder which blade of grass I stepped on to cause _this_._

The area in front of the house was packed uncomfortably full of Death Eaters with the Chief Death Eater and Pettigrew in front, each with a shield raised and deflecting spells they couldn't respond to from the left side of the ground floor and the right side of the second floor. Along with the bodies of a half-dozen death eaters who would never bother anyone again. Something about that struck him as odd. Unless the Butterfly Effect was substantially more powerful than he and Luna's notes thought it was, there should have been no way things could have changed this much in the short time since he'd arrived.

Still, his mind, trained by years of terrorist attacks and war began to catalogue the effect of the wards and their placement. _Solid second layer wards, probably built around an entirely different wardstone given that they didn't fall when Tommy-boy overpowered the outer layer, and definitely inverted so they don't show up on a standard scan._ As far as he knew, only the Goblins had ever mastered that particular trick which also explained why the Death Eaters weren't firing spells at them. Goblin wards had a built-in power tap that absorbed energy from most spells directed at them into fueling the ward. Also, Goblin wards implied that the wards had been placed before the Fidelius since Peter would have had to give the warding team the location of the house if they had been placed after. _And given the dead Black Hats he had no idea the second layer wards were present. _That meant that Harry had a unique opportunity.

It would take even a wizard of Voldemort's power some time to tear down wards he couldn't see, while under fire and he and all his followers were out in the open with only the low wall or whatever they could conjure for cover until he did take them down. _I wish there were a few more of me. _Catching the bastard and a goodly portion of his followers between a sizable force and a set of deadly inverted conflagration wards would result in a massacre, and not the kind the Dark Tosser liked. _If wishes were fishes . . ._

Unfortunately Harry did not have access to a squad or ten of Aurors which was about right for the numbers he'd need. Still, if he could sneak within range of a thrown dagger this could all be over shortly. So, invisibility cloak in place, he set about doing just that.

XXXXX

Alger Flint hadn't had many opportunities in the world that he had been born into.

As the eldest son of the well-known and generally respected house of Flint that shouldn't have been the case. Though far from the heights of Pureblood respect and deference the Houses of Malfoy or Zabini could claim, he should still have been able to claim a slot in the Ministry- maybe even worked his way up to an assistant department head - especially after graduating from Hogwarts as a three-year Prefect in Slytherin.

Instead, he'd gone to Knockturn Alley the night of his graduation to get drunk with his friends, gotten into a bar fight, and ended up bitten by a werewolf when he'd semi-drunkenly hexed the man in the back while trying to hit one of the men his carousing had irritated.

Since then he'd been ostracized by men who had once been his friends and shunned by women who had once thought to improve their station by marrying into a house that could trace its pure blood back twelve generations.

So when the Dark Lord had appeared personally in the dive where he'd been busy trying to drink himself into unconsciousness and promised him and others like him a place in the new world he was going to create from the ashes of Wizarding Britain, he'd jumped at the opportunity.

Now, however, with six or seven of his Lord's band reduced to smoldering corpses in bare moments he was far less comfortable with his choice. Unfortunately, the mark on his arm had sealed his decision too thoroughly for him to change his mind.

For a moment he closed his eyes and took a deep breath to calm his nerves.

And smelled something that reeked of snake and magic and human. Behind them.

"My Lord! Ambush!" he yelled as he turned and cast a blasting curse where he could smell the target.

Yet even with such limited warning of the attack, the other wizard was able to avoid the spell. Unfortunately for him, however, the dirt kicked up by the curse fouled his invisibility cloak. Alger immediately began to follow up with a killing curse, "_Avada_ _k_-"

He never had the opportunity to complete it. The last thing to pass through Alger Flint's mind was the goblin-forged throwing blade that entered through his left eye socket.

XXXXX

Harry did not waste time cursing. Even though the presumed werewolf had cost him the opportunity to assassinate Tommy-boy, he was still in perfect position to bleed his forces dry. Even as he threw and then banished his first knife to take out the most immediate threat to himself, he was already casting banishing charms on anyone within a meter or two of the cottage in front of him.

Why waste time with more elaborate spells that drained more energy when he could let the wards do the hard work for him?

XXXXX

When the outer layer of wards had fallen, the Potters had not panicked. This possible eventuality had been the entire reason that they'd purchased the exorbitantly expensive goblin wards in the first place, and panicking would make that entire expenditure worthless. "Lily, they're coming! Grab Harry and go!" James yelled as he sprinted for the window to the right of the cottage's front door. A quick peek made him pale even further than he had already. The street outside the low wall seemed absolutely packed with Death Eaters. At least seven or eight more were spread out in the yard and advancing towards the house were a half dozen more with the Traitor and his master in tow.

Having confirmed his wife's worst suspicions, James slapped his hand down on the runic array hidden beside the window that brought the goblin wards to the level Sirius would probably have described as 'More paranoid than Moody' if his brother in all but blood had known of them. He was all set to activate his emergency portkey when he heard his wife curse viciously upstairs.

"They must have brought in wardstones! Aparition and portkeys are both blocked!" she yelled as little Harry started to cry loudly. Probably in protest from back-to-back failed evacuation attempts. James's blood ran cold as he considered just how much effort had gone into this ambush. _More than five thousand galleons worth of wardstones to prevent escape. Not to mention bribing or putting someone inside the Floo Office under the _Imperious_. If he's gone to this level to kill us, there's no way we'll escape on foot. _

A flick of his wand and a quick incantation summoned his Patronus. "Go to Sirius, tell him to get Dumbledore and anyone else he can scrape up. The bastard's here; Peter sold us out. Maybe the wards will hold long enough," he said, then watched the messenger fly off, though in his heart he couldn't quite believe it. Quickly he transfigured several pieces of furniture into cover for when the Death Eaters inevitably broke in. He looked back out the window just in time for Voldemort to finish his scans, a contemptuous look on his face, and motion his people forward.

_Suppose it was too much to hope that he'd stumble into the wards himself. _James reflected as the unfortunate Death Eaters moved up to the house, crossed the carefully hidden second line wards, and all immediately went up in pillars of flame nearly as hot as a dragon's breath. One, he noticed, had the presence of mind to try to cast a flame freezing charm. The Living Flame spell reacted poorly to the attempt. If anything it burned hotter. James was briefly glad the air in the house was magically purified. The burnt pork smell of seared human remains after the raid on the Parsons had made him nauseous for a week.

Knowing not to give up any advantage in the situation he was stuck in, James pressed another runic cluster, this one on the windowsill, that opened a small seam in the wards. Immediately, he opened fire on Voldemort and Pettigrew. There wasn't much chance of killing either of them, but if he could distract the so called 'Dark Lord' by forcing him to block spells, then he wasn't going to be able to focus his full attention on the wards.

Sure enough, both of the dark wizards threw up shields in time enough to stop his barrage of spells and Voldemort almost casually decapitated the rock-turned-lion James had transfigured behind him with a cutting curse before throwing up another shield to block a spell from Lily that James tentatively identified as a borderline dark Arabic piercing curse that was immediately followed with a Byzantine curse designed to penetrate shields.

The Dark Asshat slapped it aside almost easily before being forced to block another volley from James. Then, as if Heaven had answered his prayers, he heard one of the Death Eaters yell, "My lord! Ambush!" _God bless Sirius Black! _James had no idea how the man had gotten the Order there so quickly, but he wasn't about to look a gift horse in the mouth.

Out of the corner of his eye, he saw one of the murdering bastards go down almost immediately. Seconds later, five of the Death eaters inside the yard were banished into the conflagration wards in quick succession before they got wise and started to take cover behind the low wall. James shifted his fire off of Voldemort long enough to put a _Reducto _into the nearest one's back while Lily picked off the two on her side.

Unfortunately, that was all the time Voldemort needed. A bare two flicks of his wand reduced the wards to half strength and another, moments later, shattered them entirely. James abandoned the window to dive behind cover deeper in the room moments before the glass was banished right into where his face had just been. James reached into his pocket for the potion package Lily had prepared, 'just in case' and quickly drank a Pepper Up to boost his flagging reserves just as Lily appeared on the stairs and transfigured them into better cover.

Their eyes met across the room, and James couldn't help but smile. Maybe, just maybe they might be able to get out of this mess alive after all. _He must have spent a lot of his reserves pulling down the wards with brute force that way. If we can just hold him off until the Order can fight their way inside-_

A quick roll and a shield were all that saved him as Voldemort came through the door and immediately fired a dark blasting curse at his cover. Lily immediately fired at the Dark Lord and Wormtail while James transfigured the debris into spears and banished them at the doorway. _Just survive until the Order can fight their way in. _Somehow, he doubted that was going to be as easy as it sounded.

XXXXX

Harry cursed as the second line of wards fell, then cursed again and ducked a bolt of magic the color of his eyes before snapping off a silent cutting curse that opened a Death Eater's throat almost to his spine. What the Americans called a 'functional decapitation' since it was severing everything important. A quick glance at the front of the cottage revealed a lack of visible Dark Wankers and an explosion inside. Harry banished his last dagger into the chest of another silver-masked wizard and ducked back into cover and cursed. _Damn it! I've come this far and I'm going to lose them anyway?_

No. He refused to let that happen. He had to get in there and kill Voldemort and he had to do it right the bloody hell now. That meant he couldn't waste time with these pillocks. _I'd give my left nut for my potions to have survived intact._ Unproductive, the thought was shunted aside. He was beginning to consider a frontal assault in spite of its low chance of working when an object on the street caught his eye.

A car was parked in front of the house a bit down the road and it dredged up a memory. One of Hermione's spells that, in that understated way of hers, she'd described as 'car to cat transfiguration.' He'd never cast it himself. Combat transfiguration was not one of his skills, and it was an expensive spell to cast even for a mature witch.

But he'd always done well under pressure. His pa. . . . Lily and James's lives rested on his presence. Perhaps even his analog's life. Calming himself as much as possible he spent a valuable second making sure he had the image of what his . . . of what Hermione had created clear in his mind as he closed his eyes and forced magic to work his will. Almost immediately he regretted it; the pain as he pushed his young body's limits was excruciating. Still, when he forced his eyes open, he saw exactly what he'd remembered.

The vaguely patherlike cat formed of steel and razor sharp glass roared its anger and pounced on the suddenly very busy Death Eaters. By the time Harry forced himself to his feet the feline abomination had slaughtered three of them and was working on a fourth. Given that there had only been six or seven left, Harry was confident that the transfigured and animated pseudo-golem could handle them. Another explosion from the cottage got him running in that direction. Only at the last minute did he remember to reach up and press the runes laboriously inscribed onto the armor along the side of his jaw. No sense in letting a good chance to give old Snake Face misinformation go to waste.

XXXXX

Lily couldn't believe that they had lasted this long. Just the two of them against Pe-the Traitor and Voldemort. Only the fact that she and James knew each other and the way the other fought so well had kept them alive this long. Well, that and the fact that the Traitor was almost more a hindrance to Voldemort than a help.

She'd cast a charm almost as soon as the fight started that apparently even the Dark Lord himself didn't know how to counter. It had whipped up a whirlwind of debris in front of her that had successfully intercepted everything from killing curses to explosive hexes, but that she could control well enough to still effectively fire back. Still, Lily knew that Voldemort was mostly treating her as a distraction at the moment. James was more immediately vulnerable than she was and even though he had more room to maneuver, he lacked the height advantage Lily possessed.

He was also, Lily knew, beginning to slow. She couldn't believe Voldemort's endurance. It was simply inhuman how the man could burn through so much magic and still have power to spare. In contrast, her husband's transfigurations were taking longer and becoming less precise.

_Where is the Order? _she wondered as she bit her lip and fired another brace of curses through suddenly formed gaps in her whirling shield. A severing curse nearly struck Pe-the Traitor, but at the last moment, Voldemort levitated a piece of what had originally been a chair into its path, apparently deciding that having a second target for the Potters to deal with was important enough for him to save his branded rat. _Are they having that much trouble with the Death Eaters outside? _Taking a page from her husband's book of tricks, she transfigured some of the debris behind them into scorpions, but the Traitor must have noticed them out of the corner of his eye because he turned and sprayed acid onto them. Still, the trick was more something James would have pulled than Lily's forte, and the Dark Lord finally made a mistake. The cutting curse that came from James wand caught Voldemort in mid turn towards her own position, his eyes widened and he shifted to the right to dodge.

Voldemort's reflexes were, quie simply, serpentine: fast and fluid. Even so, he wasn't quite fast enough to avoid the whole blow, and a ragged tear opened nearly an inch long on the outside of his left arm.

That was when Voldemort apparently decided that enough was enough. The brace of curses he fired at her husband's position left the dark wizard gasping, but they also brought much of the second story's contents on that half of the house falling on and around her husband's last position.

"James!" she cried in horror, speaking the first word that was not a spell in what felt like an hour. Her distraction was enough to open a hole in her defenses, and the most powerful dark wizard to strike England in centuries snuck a curse through. The wall beside her exploded. Something struck the side of her head, and the world grayed out.

XXXXX

Harry stepped into the house just in time to see hi-Lily struck by the debris of some type of explosive curse, and everything went red as Harry's rage boiled over. Peripherally, he noted that Voldemort, that never-to-be-sufficiently-damned INBRED FILTH throwing his head back in a laugh as HIS MOTHER lay bleeding and perhaps DIEING on the stairs.

Scraping up the dregs of his magic, he threw a silent piercing curse at the bastard's back. Something must have warned him, though Harry had no idea what, because he wandlessly pulled Peter Pettigrew into the curse's path.

"Oh?" The Dark Tosser asked as he turned, but then froze as the lights of the cottage and the pause in the battle finally gave him a clear view of his enemy.

_He must have been expecting the Order of the Flaming Chicken. _Harry realized as the last of the haze of rage faded a bit from his vision and he remembered the plan. If he'd had the energy, he would have sworn at himself for being an imbecile. He was literally running on fumes magically, only his long experience preventing himself from passing out in magical exhaustion.

"Who are you to dare assault the great Lord Voldemort? I might have expected the Old Fool's imbeciles to think they could win against my might, but-"

Harry tuned him out. If the bastard was content to run his mouth, Harry was content to let him. Frankly, he needed a breather. _Alright, I've got him right where I want him. Now what the hell do I do? _He was going to have to play at least one of his trump cards. The question, though, was which one. _Damn it, if I had any magic left at all I could take him. he's wounded and he used a lot of power pulling down the wards. _Even without his gauntlets, his innate sensing ability was sufficient to tell that Snake Face currently had less power than Draco had in second year, and Harry could have pounded _him _into the ground any day of the week. _If wishes were . . . _Harry's thought trailed off and he set to contemplating furiously. _I still have the runes. _When he'd inspected his new younger self, they had still been present, but they'd been black. Inactive. Finally the pieces of the puzzle clicked together. _Now Luna's notes make sense. 'Time travel is impossible' despite having the ritual all worked out in the following pages. _It had made no sense to him at the time. Now it did. _I didn't travel in time. If I had, the runes would be gone since I haven't earned the right to them. I didn't travel back in time. I traveled sideways._ That's what the ritual was for. Jumping timelines to one that had not yet arrived at the point you wished to change.

It explained why he'd missed the date he had set. There _wasn't _a timeline at that exact place. _It dropped me as close as it could to when I'd specified. _Which meant . . . _I have the runes. I've _earned _the runes._

Harry snapped back to focus the moment Voldemort pointed his wand at him. "How many did you lose simply facing my servants? You stand no chance against me!" The man, if he could still be called that stated, doing his best to cover for his weakness.

Harry smiled beneath the masklike covering across his mouth and spoke, "How many," he began, his voice that of an old man, gravel like and low in pitch before it shifted to a middle aged woman's voice with a soft alto, "did we lose?" Voldemort jerked minutely, surprised, before his eyes narrowed as the runes on Harry's collar again changed his voice, this time to that of a little girl who sounded remarkably like Luna Lovegood had at twelve, "There was only ever," he said before his voice became a man's tenor, "one of us here," He concluded as he silently pushed what magic he had left into the runic tattoos on his shoulders and chest, suddenly confident, _knowing_ what Voldemort was going to ask, and knowing that it would activate the _Geas_.

"Who are you!" the last heir of Slytherin's blood demanded.

Under his mask, Harry's smile grew, and as he spoke, were anyone able to see them, they would find his runes began to glow a deep green. "We are an," he began in a woman's voice that possessed a slight lisp, then transitioned into an angry sounding man's, "envoy of," before concluding with the voice of a teenaged girl with a slight French accent, "your mortality."

Immediately, Harry felt reenergized as magic began to flood his system as he declared his oath and the _Geas _written in his flesh activated.

Voldemort was stock still for a moment, "What?" he hissed almost sibilantly, his tone low and almost shocked.

"Did you not / know? You have / overreached yourself. You have / brought damnation upon / your own head," Harry replied, his voice altering every few words. He had the bastard's attention now. Time to feed him as much bullshit as he could shove down his paranoid serpentine throat. "The Count has / been distorted, and / Azrael will brook no / further interference."

_There, suitably oblique and cryptic, _Harry decides before speaking again, "Now, die!"

Voldemort's shock holds him motionless for a moment. Harry can almost imagine him trying to process the fact that this strange being is totally unafraid and apparently contemptuous of him, and failing. Just for a moment, he looked like a poleaxed steer before rage passed over his face and he yelled, "_Avada Kedavra!" _

Harry had already expected the attack. It had been half the point of pushing him so hard and demonstrating such contempt. An enraged Voldemort was a predictable one and silently summoned a piece of debris to take the hit instead of him. "Do not think to / strike us down / with our Master's power," he said, again force feeding Snake Face a load of bull before he began to stride forward, the wand in his hand snapping off silent but pinpoint accurate piercing and severing curses, keeping in mind the fragile state of the cottage and avoiding things that would explode. Voldemort, for the first time in all the times they fought, actually began to back away. _All too easy to play on a man's insecurities when you know exactly which buttons to push. _

Harry was feeling confident. He had Tommy-boy on his heels, and was casting quickly enough that he was forcing Snake Face to use up more and more of his remaining pool of strength blocking instead of fighting back.

That was, of course, when everything went to hell.

XXXXX

James Potter came to face down with an annoying weight on top of him, a fuzzy head, and broken glasses. Reflexively, he cast a _Reparo _at them before his concussed brain reengaged and his eyes widened. _Lily! Harry!_

He tried to jump to his feet, only to be forcibly reminded of the weigh on top of him as it shifted and jammed into his right kidney. Twisting his head to look backwards, he noted that the bedroom set from his and Lily's room was stacked on and around him and could only be grateful that nothing truly heavy had landed on him directly. The chair leg poking him in the back was bad enough. Quickly, he transfigured the armoire holding it down into paperboard, then quickly pushed the chair off of him, noting peripherally, and despite a concussion that really ought to have had him passed out for several hours, that there were still spells being cast, which meant that there was still a chance to save Harry and Lily.

Shaking his head in an attempt to clear it, he stood up right into a killing curse.

XXXXX

Unlike her husband, Lily had been struck only a glancing blow by a piece of a wall stud. Enough to ring her bell, but not quite knock her out or give her a depressed skull fracture like the blow James Potter had taken only moments before her. She came back to near-clarity more rapidly, and peeked past the side of her transfigured wall to see Voldemort fighting a shortish man she didn't recognize clad in robes from head to toe. She scrambled around for her wand and was just raising herself up to curse the bastard who'd practically destroyed her family home in the back, when he seemed to go absolutely berserk.

"_Avada Kedavra! Avada Kedavra! Avada Kedavra!" _he yelled with what sounded suspiciously like terror. It looked, initially, like he had only needed the first curse. The Dark Lord's sudden apparently terror-induced assault obviously surprised the man he was fighting and the first curse struck him in the chest.

But instead of the man falling limply to the floor in death, his chest seemed to explode and scatter fragments of stone all around him. The second curse struck one of those fragments and detonated prematurely. The third would likely have gone the same way as the second except that the man had gotten off one last curse as he was hit, and the cutting curse cut an inch long slice out of the outside of Voldemort's wand arm midway between his elbow and wrist, and the wand spun out of his hand as he fired, the death curse flying wildly off target. And straight into a just-standing James Potter who dropped like a puppet with cut strings.

Lily's eyes widened and her jaw dropped as she stared in shocked incomprehension at what she'd just seen. A few moments later she heard a voice screaming her husband's name. It was only when the tears began to drip onto her hands that she realized the voice was hers.

XXXXX

For a moment, no one in the room moved. Harry knew, intellectually, that he was probably going into shock. Though his armor had saved him from the curse, the concussion had still caused at least some damage to his ribs. Oh, and he'd just watched the cross-timeline analog of his father murdered. When that thought finally processed, his hands clenched hard enough that the bones in his fingers popped. Harry's mind took in the room in a fraction of a moment.

His mother was still crying out his father's name, and Voldemort had already begun to turn to her. Harry began to raise his right hand, only to realize his wand wasn't in it. Instead, he reached for the red and white containment sphere on his belt, unclipped it, and threw it towards his mother over Voldemort's head. It was a perfect throw. It struck the barricade in front of the newly widowed Lily Potter and snapped open as the containment system disengaged. A semi-formless cloud of black vapor took shape just in time to intercept the killing curse that would have orphaned a one year old, and orphaned his analog for the second time. It also made the vaporous being annoyed.

Harry managed to drag himself to a sitting position and commanded, "Go get him / Mort," as he wandlessly summoned both his wand and the containment sphere.

The Black cloud let out a roar that sounded like the wails of a thousand damned souls all crying out at once and swirled forward. Voldemort screamed as it surrounded him, closed off the breath from his lungs, and began to feed. Harry caught motion in his peripheral vision and turned his head away from the disturbing scene to see his mo-Lily gathering her husband into her arms.

"James?" she asked as though expecting him to wake. "James?" she asked again, a little louder, her voice rising in pitch momentarily before falling again, and Harry closed his eyes in an effort to force back his tears. "Don't leave me, James. Please don't leave me alone." The horrible grief in her voice was more than he could bear. He forced himself to his feet as Lily began to sob inconsolably into her husband's hair. He hobbled over to her as quickly as he could on unsteady legs, letting the magic restored by his _Geas _push him away from shock.

Harry stared, hands clenched, and silently cursed whatever higher beings existed, and when he ran out of those, he cursed himself. _I had him. I _had _him. And instead of killing him and being done with it, I _played fucking tiddlywinks _with him. _

He'd come back in time. Or rather, left his own with two goals. Destroy Voldemort, and save two people. _Merlin and Morgana, I can't even do _that _right! _He worked his jaw and mastered himself before he knelt down and put his hand on his m-on Lily's shoulder. She looked up, but hardly seemed to react to the stranger in her home.

He'd intended to give her his condolences, seal the cloud of mist still feeding on Voldemort's death, send a messenger patronus to St. Mungo's and leave before he ruined anything else. Instead, looking into her eyes, his conviction shattered. Looking in her eyes, he could not force himself to see simply Lily Potter, a stranger, a cross-time dimensional analog of a person he'd never known. His mother was grieving his father's death; he couldn't leave her alone. "He didn't leave / you alone," he said before grimacing under his mask as she flinched at the cycling voiced. He reached up and deactivated the runes before starting over, "He didn't leave you alone, Lily. He gave you a son, with black hair and green eyes," he reminded her.

It was like flipping a switch. Her empty gaze, focused only on what she had lost, vanished. Her eyes widened, "Harry!" she yelled, and took off up the stairs so fast she seemed to have aparated.

Harry, the older Harry, (and wouldn't that be awkward if he stayed?) felt torn. He wanted to follow, even if she never knew, if he took the secret and fled, if he died in an accident tomorrow, she was his mother. The very image of the woman he'd seen in the Mirror of Erised a decade and a half ago. And a part of him wanted nothing more than to seek comfort from her. To have a chance to have at least a semblance of the family fate had denied him twice over. _Thrice _he corrected himself, looking down at the cooling body of his father. He knelt and slid his eyes closed.

He closed his own moments later. _Merlin what a mess._

He got his feet back under him and began to stand, favoring his injured ribs when a voice called out from the shattered doorway, _"Reducto!"_

He had no time to shield even if that had been his first reaction, but he'd been surprised before. Still, without his gauntlets, his defensive options were limited to those with a wand, but, as his mind caught up with his reflexes, he decided this was probably the best of several bad options anyway. The _Reductor, _instead of hitting him in the back and potentially doing further damage to his ribs or the organs those ribs protected, instead impacted his left wrist and detonated on his armor. Thankfully, the first layer of the armor held, basilisk hide sheading the magic contemptuously, and the concussion wasn't quite enough to break any bones. Harry whirled, wand out and mentally cursing himself for a fool for assuming his transfigured cat had killed all of the Death Eaters outside.

Only to stop in shock when he saw who was standing in the doorway preparing another curse. "Padfoot!" he barked out, which caused the much healthier looking version of his Dogfather to pause. Then the man took in the lack of a silver mask and the hole blasted in the chest of his armor and his jaw dropped.

"What the bloody hell?"

"Sirius?" Li-_no, if there is any chance she can accept me, until I know she _won't_ I will call her mother_- called out from upstairs. He could hear her moving but nothing from his mini-me, she must have silenced him to keep him quiet during the fight.

Sirius's eyes darted from Harry to the stairs and back. "Lily, what's going on?" he demanded, wand still pointed at what, to him, was a total unknown that he'd found crouched over his best friend's body.

Thankfully, before he could do anything drastic, Lily appeared at the top of the stairs holding baby Harry to her chest as though he was made of china. "Oh, Sirius!"she cried as she rushed down the stairs and enveloped him in a hug that quickly became wracking sobs.

"Lily? Who is this? What happened?" he asked, shocked before he seemed to finally notice the cloud hovering over Voldemort's corpse. "And what the hell is that?"

That, at least, was a question Harry could answer. It was also likely to distract the others and so might start the process of sorting everything out. "That," he said, "is a Mortivore."

Sirius shot him another suspicious look. "And that means?" he inquired.

"The Latin is plain. And quite descriptive," he said with only a touch of sarcasm. Sirius visibly began to try to parse the word out. Instead it was his mother who jumped on the answer.

"A death eater?" she asked incredulously.

"Indeed," Harry affirmed, "They're a very rare variety of wraith that only develops in places where there have been . . . tens of thousands of deaths in a short period of time. Even then, they are not usually very strong. This one was captured from the remains of the Auschwitz-Birkenau concentration and extermination camp. It was literally born of the deaths of more than a million people, and it gorged on the energy given off by those deaths. It is quite strong," he said as he finally tossed the containment sphere at the Mortivore. The specifically attuned runes reengaged and sealed it away. Leaving what had been an obscured corpse revealed.

Sirius took one look and his eyes widened nearly to the point of popping out of his head, "Merlin! Is that?"

"Tom Riddle, the so-called Dark Lord," Harry said as he reattached the Mortivore's containment sphere to his belt. Old Snake Face was clearly recognizable, though that was already beginning to change. As they watched, cracks began to spread over Voldemort's visible skin. Harry knew that given a few more minutes the corpse would simply collapse into dust. It was, after all, a hallmark of necromancy use, and was likely Dumbledore's first clue that Tommy-boy had made at least one Horcrux.

"That? You?" Sirius stumbled over his tongue, obviously shocked at seeing the corpse. "Who are you?" he demanded, finally seeming to settle on one question.

He reached for his hood, hesitated, and then decided to push on. Better to get the shocks over with quickly rather than drag them out until the rest of the Order arrived. Harry lowered the hood of his robes and pulled down the mask, eyes lowered and heart nearly beating out of his chest.

"James?" Sirius blurted in surprise, but it was Lily that Harry focused on when she spoke a fraction of a second later.

"Harry?" she asked, eyes the same brilliant green as his wide open and staring at him. She quickly glanced down at the one-year-old in her arms before looking back up and meeting his gaze, looking, if anything, even more shocked than before. "But, how?"

"A ritual. Time travel, or that's what I thought at the time," he explained as Sirius stumbled back to the wall and promptly dropped to sit on the floor, jaw still dropped. "It was actually dimensional travel, and I somehow lost a decade and a half or so in the bargain," he said with a wry smile before even that expression fell off his face. "I'm sorry. About Dad, that is. Even with all this I couldn't save him," he admitted, shoulders hunched, expecting a rebuke.

His mother pulling him into a hug almost knocked him over. "Hush, it's all right," she said as she brushed tears he hadn't realized he was shedding off of his face while ignoring the ones on her cheeks, "none of us would have made it if you hadn't been here. That bastard," she indicated Voldemort's crumbling corpse, "brought enough of his servants to be sure of that."

For a minute, Harry stood and simply let himself be comforted before his younger self began to get fussy, and he stepped back out of the embrace. He sniffed, dried his eyes, and took a deep breath before trying to kick his mind into gear. "The Order will be here soon," he said, thinking out loud.

"Yeah," Sirius confirmed. "Though I don't think they'll believe this. I wouldn't have if I hadn't se-" he managed before Harry cut him off.

"We can't tell them," he stated firmly; when he saw Sirius start to open his mouth he continued forcefully, "Dumbledore does not have the Potters' best interests at heart. I speak from experience." That shut his godfather up and made Lily's eyes open wide.

"I'd nearly forgotten. When we first discussed setting up the Fidelius, Albus cautioned us against using Sirius as secret keeper. Said he was too obvious a choice." Her voice faltered and she paled enough that Harry was momentarily concerned she was going to faint.

Harry took over, "That was probably about the time people began to mutter about Remus being a dark creature, right?" Sirius stared and his jaw fell open. "That left one choice, correct? It seemed so obvious that the rat should be secret keeper. After all, no one would suspect him." Harry shook his head. "All Dumbledore cared about was discovering which of two possibilities would be his child of prophecy."

Lily gasped and clutched baby Harry tighter. "You mean?"

Harry nodded, "He set a trap. Or rather two traps. He was perfectly willing to sacrifice all of you to determine whether or not Harry or Neville was the child mentioned in the prophecy. Dumbledore is every bit the dark lord Voldemort is. Worse even, because instead of torture and murder, he cloaks his actions in manipulation and soft tyranny." Harry frowned and then moved for the door as a plan came to mind. "And I need a new name. And a fake history if I'm going to serve as a distraction to keep the old meddler away from Mini-me."

"One of my cousins?" Lily started hesitantly. "Not many people in the Wizarding World know enough about the Muggles to prove that I don't have any."

Sirius shot that down immediately. "No, even without glasses he looks too much like James. . . " he trailed off for a moment, obviously considering an idea before wincing.

"What is it?" Lily asked as they all filed outside.

"You won't like it," Sirius said before Lily's glare got him talking. "Charlus wasn't all that old when he passed. Not for a Wizard of his power anyway. Not too old to have sired a bastard."

Lily grimaced as Harry looked around and then whistled sharply. "You're right I do- oh my," she cut herself off as the cat, looking somewhat the worse for wear, jumped down from the roof of the house next door.

Harry made eye contact with it and then it immediately began seeking out the corpses of the death eaters in the street and yard and tearing them apart while Harry summoned his throwing knives from the corpses. "Tell anyone who asks that Da-James created it. Family magic, you don't know the spell." Harry instructed. "And call me Hadrian. Any slips will seem funny rather than suspicious."

The two adults nodded before Sirius got back to brainstorming as they headed back inside, "So, Hadrian Potter, bastard son of Charlus Potter and a Muggle-"

"Muggle won't work," Lily cut him off, "He has a wand and knows how to use it, but he won't show up in any records here . . . an American witch?" she suggested.

"With his accent?" Sirius shot back.

"Naturalized. Lived here in the muggle world instead of back in America. Home schooled because the British Education system is sub-par. Her name . . . Anna, she died recently of cancer," Harry suggested.

Lily and Sirius both stopped and stared at him before demanding, "Sub-par?" in unison.

Harry began stripping out of his armor as he responded, "Britain's history curriculum is a joke. Outside Europe, no one else in the world recognizes OWLs or NEWTs in the subject, and Muggle Studies is an insult. Even transfiguration is behind the times. They still teach Gamp's law for God's sake which was disproved in the '60s. Of course it was a muggleborn who did it, so I suppose that explains why the Ministry here ignores it. Don't even get me started on Potions." Harry said with an eye roll. The class had been so much easier when he studied it during his time training in Japan. _Adding the muggle chemistry lessons to the magical curriculum fills so many holes in the information we learned from Snape._

Finally rid of his armor, wincing at the damage to his ribs, he transfigured his clothing to worn, if good quality muggle apparel. He then shrunk his armor and slipped it into a pocket "Two more questions, how did I find the cottage here since it was under the _Fidelius_?" he asked, his mother and Sirius still staring at his revelation about education in England, "and how did I manage to defeat Voldemort?"

Lily shook herself after another moment and turned her formidable intellect to finding an answer, "Well, the cottage here has been in the family for years. Let's say your 'mother' knew of it and sent you here with an address. You wandered past earlier but couldn't find it, then came back after the wards fell and stumbled inside trying to help," she fabricated quickly. "As for the Dark Lord . . ." she visibly struggled for a moment then shrugged. "Accidental magic. A reaction to seeing your 'half-brother'" here she choked up a bit before soldiering on, "killed right in front of you as you came in the door." She shook herself and clenched her fists for a moment before transfiguring a piece of debris into a cradle for Harry. "And don't think I didn't notice you favoring your ribs. Off with your shirt, young man, and let me take a look at them."

XXXXX

So it was, when the Order of the Phoenix arrived nearly ten minutes later, they found Lily Potter bandaging an unknown boy's ribs and watching young Harry while Sirius Black was gathering up the wands of the nearly two-dozen deceased. All while a large, and disturbing metallic and glass feline looked on, trying to groom its glass 'fur' to get all the pieces of death eater out.

XXXXX

Wow, this has been sitting on my computer half-finished and largely untouched for most of two years. For whatever reason, I suddenly felt the desire to finish it. That likely has something to do with the fact that I'm well and truly sick of beating my head against the wall with SotBP. I'll write some more on this until I hit a roadblock or I regain the will to work more on the Thirty Xanatos Pileup for my other fic.

Please review! It is, after all, the coin of the realm.


	2. Chapter 2

Alright, I'd like to address a couple of things brought up by guest reviewers, if only to get them off my chest. First, the Harry in this story is human. He has flaws. He has not activated degreelessness mode. As such, he makes mistakes. Please also note that this fic is mostly written from the standpoint of an 'imperfect narrator,' that meaning that not everything that the narrator says will be correct; the characters' thoughts are the characters' thoughts, not Gospel truth. One old saying that I have found to be very true is, 'Men plan. God laughs,' My stories in progress and any future ones will tend to reflect this.

Second, there is a longstanding record of formerly great cultures falling on their faces and trying to hold on to past glories. Look at the Arab world. While Europe was in the grips of the Dark Ages, the Arabs were building water clocks of stunning complexity and beauty among other feats of science. Even as recently as the 1700s, Arabic doctors were preferred over those trained in Europe because they had their shit together and didn't kill their patients nearly as often. Now, we look at a lot of the Arab world with disdain because they haven't done anything since. A culture that would have once been considered liberal with respect to the treatment of women is now deservedly scorned for their poor treatment of them. For that matter, America, who once had one of the most competitive education systems in the world now has a public school system that is a shambling wreck(thank you teachers' unions!). I see no reason that, given the corruption we see in Fudge's office in canon, we should have any expectation of effectiveness elsewhere. Harry Potter's Magical England is stuck in the glory days of Merlin. Just like the actual Arab world: What have they done lately? Other than sponsor terrorists, that is.

Alright, rant over, on to chapter two

XXXXX

Tempus Fugit

Chapter Two

Once the chaos of their arrival was sorted out, the Order set to fixing the cottage with a will even as several new arrivals stopped to be messily sick at the sight of the various remains the car-turned-cat had spread all over the vicinity. Har-_Hadrian_ noted that even Dumbledore's eyes opened wide at the carnage the transfiguration appeared to have inflicted. The old man's gaze focused briefly but intensely on the twenty-something turned preteen before sliding past him to his assumed persona's sister-in-law. "Lily, we came as quickly as we could," he said, and Har-_Hadrian, _he reminded himself again, made sure not to look at the lying bastard.

_Your familiar could have had you here before Sirius if you cared at all, _Hadrian thought while using his occlumency to keep his true emotions off his face, and hoping the expression of fear and pain he'd pasted on his features looked more believable than it felt.

"I heard about James, my dear, I'm sorry for your loss," he continued, kind grandfatherly expression firmly in place. It would have been easy to miss how his eyes took in Harry in his transfigured cradle, and tightened slightly as they revealed no marking of any sort on the child. "At least young Harry seems to be alright."

Hadrian felt Lily tense slightly behind him for just a moment before she relaxed. He didn't know her well, but he suspected their plan had just survived a near-miss at disaster. _At least now I know I inherited the temper honestly._

"Thank you Headmaster," Lily said, not having to fake the grief in her voice at the reminder of her murdered husband so much as suppress her anger. "I suppose you want to see what's left of _his _body then?" she asked, inclining her head at the dust and robes that were all that remained of Voldemort's corpse.

Hadrian watched out of the corner of his eye as the old meddler cast several spells at the remains and hid his smile at the man's befuddlement. _That at least confirms that he's never run into a Mortivore before. _Though the wraiths were rare, perhaps even undiscovered entirely at this point in time, they left a distinct magical trace behind them.

Finally, he turned away from the body and re-approached Lily, casting another subtle confused glance at Harry. "My dear, I'm afraid I don't recognize the spell used to defeat Voldemort," several of the Order members in earshot flinched with Hadrian a heartbeat behind them as Dumbledore continued, "could you tell me what happened?"

Lily nodded before beginning to spin out their engineered story of the fight, with James using a spell she didn't recognize to transfigure the neighbor's car into the giant metal monstrosity that was still lounging in their yard and Peter and old Snake Face breaking inside and leaving the other Death Eaters to face it alone. She claimed Peter's death as a result of a curse deflected by Voldemort before describing the spell that wounded James and taking the hit from the debris, but inserted James's death to coincide with Hadrian's arrival. " . . . and then . . . I'm not sure, Headmaster, it looked like accidental magic," she claimed as she hugged Hadrian tightly.

The preteen in question made sure to get a good look at the expression of Dumbledore's face. It was absolutely priceless as his personal theory appeared to have been stood on its head. "You mean . . ." he trailed off, looking like a balloon someone had just deflated.

"He stepped inside just as V-voldemort killed James," again, Lily didn't have to fake the grief in her voice of the tears in her eyes. "He must have seen something out of the corner of his eye, because he whirled and cast a spell at Hadrian. Hadrian yelled, and this cloud of blue burst from his hands. When it cleared, the body had cracks running through it and just," she gestured, as though scattering something from her hands, "just fell to dust."

Hadrian couldn't believe how good a liar his mo-his _sister-in-law _was. She injected just the right amount of awe into the statement to make it sound like she could hardly believe what she'd seen without quite going over the top and exaggerating it.

Even through Dumbledore's disciplined façade, Hadrian could tell he was reevaluating his assumptions. Hadrian knew what would happen next. Dumbledore, in his own way, was every bit as predictable as Tommy-boy. _When in doubt, gather information._

"Hadrian?" he asked, kneeling down, full Grandfatherly act employed, "Can you tell me what happened? How you came to be here?" Even knowing it was coming, the Legilimency probe was almost a surprise.

Harry didn't so much as flinch. He gave no indication at all that he'd felt anything. Though rare, natural Occlumens were far from unheard of. Still, because of the eye contact, Harr-_Hadrian_ was glad he'd cast a cosmetic charm to turn his eyes a robin's egg blue. "I-" he started, and then pretended to hesitate. He looked down and swallowed as though trying to fight back tears. It wasn't hard to fake, all he had to do was remember that once again Harry Potter would grow up without a father and he found producing tears quite easy. "My mum, sir, she'd been sick a long time. When-when she . . ." he trailed off, turned his head aside and swallowed before continuing, "Before she passed, she told me my father's family lived here. I looked earlier today, but I couldn't find it. When I came back tonight-" Hadrian cut off again and looked to where, James Potter's body lay under a conjured sheet and permitted the tears he had restrained to flow.

"He looked like the picture of my dad, but younger. And he just . . . just _fell _and-" Harry gathered everything he could behind his occlumency shields and pushed his grief forward. He tucked his head into Lily's chest and began to sob.

Albus too-bloody-many-names and his mother both began to comfort him, though only Lily's efforts were truly sincere. "I'm truly sorry you had to see that, my boy," Dumbledore said, though Harry could see from his peripheral vision that the Headmaster's eyes didn't quite match his tone. It was obvious he'd put together 'Hadrian's' fabricated lineage. His next question confirmed it. "Lily, I'm sorry to presume upon you given what you've suffered, but I must ask you, would be willing to take young Hadrian here in?"

Lily shot the old man a look before she replied, "Of course I will, Headmaster. I can tell just looking at him that he's related to-to James. How could I turn away family?" The Meddler in Chief's benevolent smile seemed to assure that he had entertained no such thoughts, but that he merely hadn't wanted to presume. Hadrian had to bite his tongue to keep from trying to hex the old sodomite.

"Just a couple more questions, young man, and then I will let you get comfortable with your new arrangements," he said, benevolent smile and eye twinkle firmly in place. "Have you had any formal schooling yet?" he asked and Harry immediately knew where he was going.

"Not at school, sir. Mum hired tutors for me when we moved back here." That caught Dumbledore's attention.

"Oh, and where did you live before?"

"Mom said I was born back in the States, and that she moved back here when I was two to be where my dad was from," _And, _Hadrian considered, _that also neatly explains why I'm not in the Hogwarts book. I wasn't born here._

Dumbledore apparently came to the same conclusion. "And when is your birthday, young man? As you might have gathered, I'm the headmaster at a very prestigious school in Scotland, and I'd like you to attend."

_And here we come to the crux of it, _Hadrian realized. The entire conversation had existed so he could ask that one question. "I'm twelve, sir, my birthday is September the Thirtieth," he said. For a moment, more sensed than actually seen, Dumbledore froze. _I wouldn't be surprised if his heart skipped a beat, _Hadrian thought irreverently before he seemed to consider something. "I'm not sure I'd like to go to a school though," he said, lowering his head shyly.

Dumbledore's face broke into a smile that seemed quite sickly for just a fraction of a second before he recovered his composure, "I'll give you and Lily here some time to think it over before next term starts," he said. "Unfortunately, this was not the only attack tonight, and I am needed elsewhere, so I must bid you all good night," the old meddler concluded as he began to somewhat abruptly leave.

Hadrian smiled to himself, his face still inclined towards the ground.

_Mission accomplished._

XXXXX

It was all Dumbledore could do to make it back to his office in Hogwarts before collapsing into his chair and beginning to swear. _How could I have been so wrong? _he asked himself, going over the prophecy's wording once given the new information he'd obtained.

_The one with the power to vanquish the Dark Lord approaches. _He'd assumed that the verse meant that 'the one' was going to be born soon, but it could just as easily, he realized, refer to the boy returning to England from the Americas or even approaching Godric's Hollow for the inevitable encounter.

_Born to those who have thrice defied him, _If the boy was the bastard son of Charlus Potter, the man's legendary denouncement of several Pureblood-supported pieces of legislation in the Wizengamot might very well qualify, though finding out what the boy's mother had done to defy the dark lord would be harder.

_Born as the seventh month dies. _That had seemed so obvious. July was the seventh month of the calendar, but September bore the Latin root _sept,_ which meant seven. It was horrifically embarrassing that he had not even considered the possibility.

_And the Dark Lord will mark him his equal. _Again, he'd assumed that the mark must be physical. What if he had been wrong? Was the fact that he turned to attack the boy as a serious threat enough to be considered the mark? He would not have even considered it the day before. On the other hand, he also hadn't even conceived of the idea that he was looking at the wrong month the day before either.

_But he shall have power the Dark Lord knows not. _That was also less than clear. The spell residue from Voldemort's corpse was completely incomprehensible. Was something about the boy's magic different from that of others? Albus simply didn't know. Abruptly, he was reminded of an offhand comment Nicolas Flamel made back when he was studying alchemy as his apprentice, '_The only certainty about foretellings is that they are subtle and difficult to understand. Even if you happened to know the prophecy in question was in process, you likely wouldn't recognize the fulfillment until it was over.'_

One thing he did know, however, was that it was imperative that the boy attend Hogwarts where he could keep an eye on him.

XXXXX

It was nearly four o'clock in the morning before the last of the Order of the Phoenix and the few Aurors who'd bothered to show up hours late and several pence short left the newly repaired cottage. The deceased Death Eaters, including, much to the surprise of the Order, one Peter Pettigrew, had been hauled off to be reassembled, bagged, and tagged at the ministry while several members of the Accidental Magic Reversal Squad had, after much difficulty, managed to turn the metallic feline on the lawn back into a car for the neighbor. Sirius had contacted Andrews and Sons Funeral Parlor to take James's body away for burial preparations, and one of the Andrews boys had been and gone. Lily had just managed to get Harry down for what remained of the night when Hadrian reappeared, a floating chest and tent bag behind him.

She shot a questioning look at him, so he explained, "Don't know if the Ministry is monitoring the area. Lots of people were casting levitation charms here a bit ago not much cause for shrinking ones though."

Lily's left eyebrow inched upwards, though in surprise or suspicion Harry would rather not speculate. "You think they'd be bothering with that right now?"

_Suspicion then, _he thought before answering, "Are they doing it? Don't know, but the way they've set up the system means they _can _do it. And Dumbledore is interested enough in me right now that I wouldn't put it past him to order it done in the next few days. Better to get into practice."

His mother's right eyebrow rose to join her left, "What do you mean, Albus is interested in you?" she demanded.

The concern in her voice was like a balm to Hadrian's soul. It was _good_ to know that his parents had cared. That his mother still cared about him. He'd always thought they had, but his upbringing had meant that a small part of him always wondered. Having that question answered brought a sense of peace to him that he hadn't experienced since-

He shied away from the comparison he'd been about to make. "Did he tell you about the prophecy?"

"Yes," Lily answered, drawing the word out, as though questioning the relevance of the line of inquiry.

"Did he tell you the text of the prophecy?" Hadrian continued.

His mother stiffened and drew herself upright, "You know what it says?" she asked just as Sirius walked into the room?

"What what says?" the dog animagus asked.

"The prophecy!" Lily said caught between excitement and shock. She turned back to Hadrian. "Well?" she demanded.

"'_The one with the power to vanquish the Dark Lord approaches. Born to those who have thrice defied him, born as the seventh month dies, and the Dark Lord will mark him as his equal, but he will have power the Dark Lord knows not. And either must die at the hand of the other for neither can live while the other survives. The one with the power to vanquish the Dark Lord will be born as the seventh month dies,'_" he quoted solemnly. Sirius just seemed shocked. Lily, however . . .

"What a bunch of hogwash!" the redhead growled out as she leapt up and began pacing. "That could mean almost anything!"

"Truth," Hadrian said, making calming motions in an attempt to settle his mother down. "The Meddler in Chief never believed in Divination before he saw Trelawney give that prophecy to him during her job interview. I can almost understand why. He's jumped to Divination's defense with the zeal of a convert. The problem is the old man is convinced that it refers to Voldemort and either baby Harry or Neville. This despite the fact that anyone who has undertaken a cursory study of foretelling knows that they are almost impossible to understand. Cryptic doesn't even begin to describe them." he says before correcting himself. "Or rather, he _was _convinced that it concerned either Harry or Neville. I managed to deflect suspicion onto myself." And something in that last sentence had tickled his memory.

The gears in Lily's brain were visibly turning, but before she could come to a conclusion, Sirius spoke up, "Why?" he demanded before expounding on his question, "Why is he so sure that Harry or Neville was the child mentioned?"

Hadrian opened his mouth to answer bet was cut off as Lily spoke, "Seventh month. He assumed July. Harry and Neville were both born at the end of July."

Hadrian nodded in affirmation, "Correct, but I shouldn't have to tell you two how badly the good guys were losing this war. The Order of the Phoenix was the next best thing to useless, but even so, they were far and away more effective than the Aurors. The ministry would certainly have collapsed before Christmas given the way things were going," he explained. "Dumbledore latched on to the prophecy as a propaganda coup in the beginning, but best I can tell, as things got worse he tried to force the prophecy into fulfillment in order to take down Snake Face before the house of cards fell in on him." He turned back to face Lily fully before he spoke again. "I took his attention on myself because of what he would have tried to do to Harry. What he did do to me in the world I left."

Hadrian took a deep breath, "If you need to take care of any necessities, you'd best do it before I get started. This'll take a while, and it's not the sort of story I want to repeat."

XXXXX

Lily knelt in front of the toilet as she finished emptying her stomach. Sirius was holding her hair back and looking decidedly green himself. _Strange, _she considered, _that hearing about his death affected me more than it did him. _She wiped her hand across her mouth without really thinking about it, then reached for her wand. Sirius, however, had anticipated her need and hit her with a breath freshening charm to get the taste of vomit out of her mouth.

Hadrian was leaning against the wall outside the first floor powder room and appeared to be caught somewhere between regretful and embarrassed. "Sorry abou-" he began to apologize before Lily caught him up in a hug worthy of Molly Weasley.

And promptly burst into tears. Hadrian carefully returned the embrace, patting his mother's back. Lily got the feeling that the extradimensional version of her son was uncomfortable with crying women. In other circumstances it might have surprised a laugh out of her. Given what she'd just learned about what her Harry would have had in store for him if Hadrian hadn't arrived, it only made her cry harder.

It took several minutes for her to recover enough to speak clearly, but when she did, Lily was sure to display her gratitude. "Thank you so much, Harry," she said, using his real name, "Thank you for making certain my baby won't have to survive what you did," she continued, choking back another sob. "Thank you so much for coming here to save us."

Hadrian's eyes weren't exactly dry either by that point in time. "And I did a wonderful job at that didn't I?" he sniffed and used one hand to scrub at his eyes. "I'm sorry I couldn't save Ja-Dad too," he said, eyes bright even if his tears seemed unwilling to fall.

The words hit Lily like a banisher to the chest, but she pushed past the grief and kept on point, "But you saved me. And you saved baby Harry from growing up like you did. You even saved Sirius from a decade in Azkaban." She stared directly into her grown son's eyes, willing him to believe her, to understand what she felt for him. "You left your home with, I assume, no way to return in order to help us. So thank you."

"Not as if there was anything left for me there," Harry admitted softly. Lily shot him a concerned look. Harry shook his head, "We left off after fifth year, right?" he asked. Lily nodded before she realized the question was meant to be rhetorical. Harry acknowledged her affirmation and continued, "I told you that several of the students who went with me to the Department of Mysteries were injured, but we had to take a break before I got any farther . . ."

XXXXX

Har-Hadrian trailed off almost absently. Remembering hurt. A lot. But it was an old, familiar pain by this point.

And as cliché as it was, telling his mother and godfather the story made the pain more bearable still. "Hermione was one of the ones that was injured. She took a weakened curse designed to pulp organs to the chest. Since it wasn't designed to be easily reversible, she was in the hospital wing recovering," he spoke, reminiscing. "She was my best friend, despite what I told Ron by times. She was the only person still alive who I could depend on completely, and seeing her in that hospital bed, it suddenly struck me that I loved her. I depended on her for . . . everything really. Need an obscure fact? Ask Hermione. Spell research? Likewise. Hell, despite being a muggleborn she was the one who identified Slytherin's monster in the Chamber of Secrets, not Albus kiss-my-ass-and-I'll-give-you-crumbs Dumbledore. A thirteen year old girl solved the mystery that had everyone considering shutting down the school," Hadrian cut himself off realizing that he was starting to ramble and refocused. "Anyway, she was lying there, just having finished the sixth out of ten potions she'd have to take that day, and all because I screwed up. And the realization that I never want to be separated from her hits me like a truck as I'm looking at her."

Ha . . .Hadrian shook his head as he continued, "I think, if I had left before speaking to her, I could have talked myself out of it. Convinced myself that caring about her that way would be nothing but a disaster for both of us." He snorted inelegantly, "Of course, I was almost right. Not quite, but close," and there was the sharp, stabbing pain in his chest that he remembered, "still, that's jumping ahead. In any case, I never had the chance to flee from the revelation." To that day, Hadrian had no idea what had given him away; Hermione had never told him how she knew something had happened. "Long story short, Hermione somehow knew I'd had an epiphany. Maybe she saw the light bulb come on over my head. On the other hand, maybe she just knew me that well. She wouldn't let me leave the Hospital Wing before I told her what it was." He smiled sadly as he remembered the discussion.

"I did a lot of tripping over my tongue before I manned up and told her. Finally just blurted out that I'd realized that I loved her." Hadrian's smile abruptly became less sad as he remembered her expression, "Right afterwards, she had this look on her face like I'd hauled off and slapped her with a dead fish. Given that my sum total of dating experience before that had been the Cho disaster, I panicked, stumbling over my words and trying to turn a confession of love bordering on a marriage proposal into something platonic." That drew a laugh from Lily and Sirius.

"Yeah," he acknowledged, "Snowflake. Hell. I probably would have managed to cram both feet into my mouth if she hadn't reached up, grabbed me by the collar, and pulled me down into a kiss," Hadrian again trailed off for a moment. That particular memory had been burned into his synapses so deeply that even Lockhart couldn't have _obliviated_ it out. "Turns out she'd had a crush on me since the troll incident in first year, she was just more mature about it than Ginny and she'd convinced herself in the intervening four years that I didn't even see her as a girl. I reminded her of the Yule Ball. She was still concerned that the only reason I was acting the way I had been was the result of seeing Sirius go through the veil." Hadrian shook his head, "I admitted that I was still dealing with it and that it hurt, but that I'd realized, seeing her in that bed, that if I lost her too it would kill me. We spent most of the rest of the afternoon holding hands and talking." Seeing the look Sirius was giving him he admitted, "There may also have been the occasional kiss. It isn't central to the story."

Recovering from the Sirius-invoked tangent, Hadrian continued, "It was surprisingly easy to go from best friends to a more romantic relationship. We more or less continued on as before, but with more hand holding and the occasional snog in a broom closet. But even though my personal life was turning around, the lives of a lot of people in the Wizarding World were going right directly to hell," Hadrian continued, his tone turning dire. "Since he'd been revealed at the Ministry, Voldemort had no reason to hide his presence further. All summer there we murders in the paper and notices of attacks on non-magicals. Then when we returned to Hogwarts in September, Hermione and I discovered that Draco had taken the Dark Mark and had a mission at school." Hadrian's eyebrows turned down into almost a 'V' shape in remembered aggravation.

"We told Dumbledore, but he didn't seem concerned, and since we hadn't seen the Mark, he refused to believe us. In the end, it got several people hurt and a lot of others, including him, killed when Death Eaters stormed the school. Snape hit him with a Killing Curse and knocked him off the Astronomy Tower."

That statement occasioned quite a bit of chaos, "That worthless, sniveling bastard!" Sirius growled as he leapt to his feet and began to pace. Lily simply scowled. Hadrian couldn't be certain, but he suspected that it was at what lengths a man who had once been her friend had fallen to.

"Calm down Sirius," Hadrian ordered before he continued, "That wasn't the worst of it, really. Dumbledore promised me personal lessons at the beginning of the first term that year, but they were a complete waste of time. All we did was look at pensive memories of Snake Face's formative years. We could have done that the first night and then started on something worthwhile, but he managed to stretch them out until the Death Eaters hit. Only useful thing I learned was that the bastard made a half-dozen soul anchors called Horcruxes. Maybe if he'd taught me something worthwhile, I could have helped keep casualties down when the bastards hit the school. Instead, it was a bloodbath.

"Hermione had contacted the DA while Dumbledore and I went to a cave near the ocean trying to retrieve one of Tommy-boy's Horcruxes. All we found were a fake and a lot of Inferni, but thanks to Hermione several members of the DA had packed their things and convinced a few of their housemates to be ready to leave. They're the only reason any of us got out, but a lot of the muggleborn who didn't come with us were murdered before the Order and some of the teachers managed to force the Death Eaters to retreat." Hadrian looked up to see his mother and Sirius looking pale.

"How did they even get inside the wards in the first place?" Lily demanded, outraged, "Hogwarts is supposed to be the safest place in the country!"

Hadrian snorted before answering, "Draco had been fixing a vanishing cabinet in the Room of Requirements all year. They bypassed the wards completely. But that's not the best part. The best part of the whole farce was that Dumbledore knew all year what Draco was doing. And let him do it because expelling him would have gotten the murderous little bastard killed." Hadrian had expected shouts of outrage when he finished his statement. Instead, Sirius and his mother simply stared at him openmouthed for several seconds before finding their voices.

"You mean to tell us that, instead of keeping the students safe, he knowingly permitted a marked Death Eater to bring other Death Eaters inside the wards?" his mother asked, sounding almost disbelieving.

"Yeah, apparently students' lives only matter if they might be convinced to turn away from the Dark Side," Hadrian replied.

"How could he even contemplate something like that!?"

And there was the explosion he'd been expecting. "Best guess? He was either well on the road to senility, or he had an ax to grind. By that point, he knew he was already dying; what better way to go out than as a martyr? After all I was the only one who could have refuted the legend of his 'heroic' death, and I was all but persona non grata for telling people truths they didn't want to hear!" Hadrian shook his head while his mother and godfather looked on openmouthed. "By then it was obvious that the ministry was less than useless, and even though we never expected just how bad things were becoming, Hermione and I had a plan.

"The previous summer, Hermione had convinced me to jump through the hoops required to get a muggle passport. I used it to book a flight to Japan. We'd done some research and discovered that the best programs on the planet for Defense, or what they called Law Enforcement Prep, were in Japan and the Americas." Hadrian paused before continuing to give voice to his memories; the next bit was going to be hard for him, but it, especially, needed said, "Originally, the plan was for both of us to leave for training. I had enough raw magical strength to match Snake Face despite the power-enhancing rituals he'd used on himself, but I lacked skill and experience. I needed to correct that imbalance before I could hope to face him with a reasonable expectation of killing the bastard. Unfortunately, neither of us had anticipated what had happened at Hogwarts. Hermione convinced me that someone had to stay behind to manage the DA and the remnants of the Order and turn them into a proper resistance. And it couldn't be me.

"Looking back, I know it was the right decision. Without her planning and running operations, the resistance to Voldemort would have collapsed inside a year. With her in charge, they managed to bog him and his fellow scum down in an endless guerrilla war. They sabotaged stockpiles of potions ingredients, ambushed parties of Snatchers, and assassinated Death Eaters in positions of power in the ministry. She almost singlehandedly turned the tables on him. Instead of being free to focus on taking over France he had to focus almost a third of his resources on quelling the rebellion at home. It bought the governments on the continent months of time after his first attacks to build forces and plans. Anytime Snake Face showed up himself, they still lost, and lost badly, but against lesser raids, they were able to hold their own." Hadrian paused momentarily; his eyes refocused on the world in front of him, and noted the looks on the faces of the two adults. They were entirely caught up in the telling of a future he hoped they would never experience.

He cleared his throat and continued, "I spent more than a year in Japan. I had some trouble at first with getting the right tutors, but after the first major raid in France that changed literally overnight. I learned both wand and bladework while I was there, though the former was much easier than the latter. Still, the pure cardio benefits would have made it worthwhile much less some of the things I learned later." Cutting the tangent, and the adults' questioning statements short he continued, "In any case, after that year they shipped me off to the United States and ran me through the magical equivalent of their SEAL training. Hostile environment, combat potions, magical creature recognition and combat, tactics, the whole lot. That took almost two years. . . "

Hadrian trailed off again and took a fortifying breath, "I was less than a month from finishing up there when the story broke. The leader of the British Resistance had been captured and Voldemort was going to execute her in front of the whole of the British Wizarding World the next day," Harry looked up, straight into his mother's eyes and saw the knowledge reflected there. They had both lost someone they dearly loved to the madman. "There was no way for me to get there in time. You couldn't get a portkey onto the island for love or money without a dark mark. The bastard had adjusted the admittance wards to preclude it, and apparition was tracked so heavily that trying it was suicide. Not even muggle methods were guaranteed to work since the Death Eaters had _imperious_ed most of the movers and shakers in the government.

"There was nothing I could do to save her. I hoped that the resistance would have a plan to spring her, but it turns out the cell structure she'd built them into meant that they couldn't put one together because they couldn't communicate fast enough. I listened to it on through a relayed Wireless transmission. Later, we even found some photographs. They're what we used to piece what happened at the end together," Hadrian could see in Sirius and Lily's eyes what they expected to hear next. He was glad he'd be disappointing them. "Hermione was a brilliant witch. She'd realized what a target she was and what her treatment would be like if she was captured. At that point, Voldemort was still trying to game the system here. He wanted it to look like the laws still meant something; as such, he wanted his prisoner in good condition for the observers." Again, Hadrian ground to a halt momentarily, remembering what had happened after the bastard had stopped caring about pretenses before he began again.

"So when Voldemort and his chief lieutenants hauled her out onto the stage in front of what had once been Gringotts for her show trial, Hermione hadn't been forced to use her final resort yet. The 'trial,' if you could call it that, went more or less as expected. When she realized she was about to be caught, Hermione wiped her own memories of any useful information about the resistance, so they didn't get anything out of her, which frustrated her captors, let me tell you. When it came time for the execution," he related pausing for a heavy swallow and with a heavier heart, working his jaw in remembered frustration and anger, "When it came time for the execution, Voldemort himself finally made an appearance. That was what she'd been waiting for."

Hadrian turned to his mother, "What do you know about the Bloodfire Elixir?"

Momentarily taken aback, she paused only a moment to think before responding, "It's a legend. Frankly, I thought it was nothing more than a myth! It's said that the Atlantians used it to create explosions of enormous power, but it's been lost ever since the island was destroyed!" Lilt's professional attention had been engaged, and there was a spark in her eye. "You mean she managed to reconstru- oh!" she said as her face fell.

The look she was giving him, in combination with his memories, almost made the tears gathered in his eyes fall. When he spoke, his voice was rougher than it had been, "She made two refinements to the original version: a spell to hold the serum in stable form after introducing it into the bloodstream and an activation rune that would act as a catalyst for the Elixir to overcome the stasis spell. She created the rune so that breaking it would activate it and then apparently tattooed it onto her tongue," Harry ignored the twin winces that came from that statement. "The last picture in the series we found shows Voldemort approaching her, then her sticking out her tongue at him and biting down. Then the explosion. Based on the size of the piece of debris flying past the camera, we can guess what happened to the photographer," He concluded with a macabre grin, absently noting Lily holding her clenched fist in front of her mouth, crying while Padfoot winced, apparently at the thought of having to bite off one's own tongue for any reason at all. "I still don't know what warned him, but Voldemort survived by triggering an emergency portkey. His inner circle wasn't so lucky. Every last one of them was on that stage, and all of them died instantly in the explosion.

"Two weeks later, I used Gillyweed to swim the Channel from Brest to Plymouth. Luna Lovegood, one of the members of the DA had managed to keep the Resistance from splintering completely, and I managed to get in contact with them a month and a half later. She was the one who'd found the bits of 'Lantean scrolls that Hermione used to reconstruct the Bloodfire Elixir. She also had a name to go with them: Peverell."

Sirius, unsurprisingly got it first. "You mean, Peverell, as in the Deathly Hallows? The story of the three brothers is real?" he demanded, eyes wide.

_Amazing how enthusiastic he can be. of course if I discovered one of the fairy tales I heard Petunia tell Dudley was real I'd probably get excited too. _"In a way and after a fashion, Padfoot," he replied. Seeing his mother's confused look, he took pity on her and explained. "Beedle the Bard is sort of like the Wizarding World's Brothers Grimm. One of the stories he tells is that of the three Peverell brothers. Working together, they thwart Death's plan to kill them. In admiration, Death offers each of them a reward. The first asks for an unbeatable wand, the second asks for a way to bring back the dead, but the third brother is smart, and realizes that this is just another ploy to kill them all. He asks for a cloak that would hide him from even Death's sight. Sure enough, the other brothers die swiftly: the first knifed in his sleep for the wand, the second kills himself in despair when he realizes the people he brings back are nothing more than shades. The third brother lives a long life and dies content. Standard fairy tale." Hadrian pauses and takes a deep breath. "Except this one has its roots in fact.

"Instead of receiving the so-called Hallows from Death the Peverell brothers inherited them honestly. They're artifacts from Atlantis." Now both of the adult's eyes were wide. "Oh, and just so you know, the Potters are descended from the Peverells."

Sirius fainted.

XXXXX

"I did not faint," Sirius pouted several minutes later.

Lily rolled her eyes at him and continued laying a sheet out on the couch. Apparently, Padfoot was spending the day. "Yes, you did, and now you're pouting. I swear it's like you're still twelve sometimes."

As she headed upstairs, Sirius shot Hadrian a look. He appeared to be trying to figure out what to say when the dimensional traveler save him the trouble. "Go to sleep, Sirius. I napped all day yesterday. I'll stay up for nightmare watch."

The animagus seemed almost ready to argue before closing his mouth and nodding. Instead he commented, "You did a good job keeping her distracted."

"Better to have something to do than sit and be miserable. I could tell she wasn't ready to sleep when baby Harry went down. Besides, you both needed to hear my story anyway." He grimaced thinking about what he'd told them and what he still had to tell, "Frankly, what I told you this morning wasn't nearly as bad as what happened next."

"And with that charming thought," Sirius interrupted, "I'll focus on trying to sleep and _not _think about what could qualify as worse than what you've already described."

Hadrian couldn't help but smile at the irreverent quip. "See you later, Padfoot."

He walked to the stairs and for a moment just looked up them. His mother had told him where the guest bedroom was, but it struck him that this was the first time he'd ever been up there when the building was intact. For a moment, he considered looking through his things, but quickly decided against it. The wards Dumbledore had thrown up were adequate for the moment, though he'd have to see about repurposing some of his ward stones to strengthen them if they were going to stay in the cottage. And that was a big 'if.' _No idea if Mum will be able to handle living here without . . . Dad. _Ha-Hadrian took a deep breath and decided to look around. If nothing else, he wanted to know where baby Harry's nappies were kept for when his alternate self woke up.

The first door he opened, just to the right at the top of the stairs, was the loo. Despite his need for a shower sometime soon, he moved on. Down the hall to the right was baby Harry's room. He snuck in quietly; just because he knew he'd have to take care of his young analogue while his mother slept didn't mean he wanted to start right now. Fortunately, the changing table was well stocked.

The only other room on that side of the house was his guest room looking out over the back yard. Harry knew the master bedroom and his parent's study were on the other side of the second floor. Quietly, he slid his mother's door open just enough to cast a monitoring charm before silently closing it.

Hadrian glanced at the door to his dad's study for a moment before deciding not to snoop. He shrugged to himself a moment later and headed to his room. _Might as well get things organized a bit. If nothing else, I can get started on figuring out which wardstones con be modified most easily. I wonder which schema Dumbledore started with. If he just did a standard McClure setup I can . . ._

XXXXX

Hadrian was almost startled when twenty minutes later, he heard baby Harry start fussing across the hall. Thankfully, his diaper was just wet instead of dirty so the mess was easily enough dealt with. It only took holding him for a few minutes to calm him down and reassure him the all the strange things that had happened over the last day didn't mean he wasn't appreciated. Baby Harry took an instant like to Hadrian. _I wonder, _he considered absently, looking into his own green eyes, _is it because I look like James, or can he tell that we're connected? _Hadrian shook his head. Harry was just a baby; besides, if their eyesight was similar, Hadrian probably only showed up as a blur. _Which reminds me, I'll need to pick up some colored contacts to keep people from getting suspicious. _One more thing to add to his list.

Knowing it was only a matter of time before his mini-me got hungry, Hadrian snuck down to the kitchen, careful not to disturb Sirius snoring on the couch, and fetched some liquefied peas. Sure enough, by the time he made it back to the nursery with his younger self's meal the fifteen month old was starting to fuss again.

Feeding him could have counted as one of the labors of Hercules. By the time he was done, Harry had nearly half his meal spread on his face and clothes and Hadrian was beginning to contemplate switching spells. Hadrian was just starting to clean up the mess when the monitoring charm on his mother's room went off. It was enough of a surprise that he was glad he wasn't holding the baby when it happened; he wasn't interested in learning if Harry could imitate Neville's accidental magic yet.

Hadrian secured the crib, his . . . nephew's messy face notwithstanding, and took off down the hall, haste tempered only by his desire to not wake Sirius. When he arrived in the master bedroom, he found more or less what he'd been expecting. Lily had managed to coil the covers around herself like a snake and her forehead was damp with sweat. She was also muttering unintelligibly but in a tone that clearly indicated distress. Hadrian carefully moved to her side and gently shook her shoulder.

Instantly, her eyes snapped open. She had an air of disorientation surrounding her as her brain abruptly kicked back to something closer to full function. Immediately, her eyes darted to him. "James, I-" she began, and for a moment there was relief in her eyes before she noticed that the person she was addressing wasn't her husband. A hurt sound escaped her throat that Hadrian found difficult to hear. All he could do was envelop her in a hug as tears gathered in her eyes. The grief she'd hidden behind action and exhaustion while awake had bubbled forth in sleep where she had no defense against it.

Looking at his mother sobbing her eyes out, Hadrian had to suppress the desire to find what had hurt her and _break _it. He'd done it to Death Eaters or other criminals often enough that it had become something of an entrenched response to a crying woman over the years. Unfortunately, there was no one he could conveniently exorcise his anger on; it would likely have been counterproductive in any case. Instead, he rubbed his mum's back and murmured vague reassurances to her until she got herself under better control.

Finally, she choked back her sobs enough to talk, "I forgot," he finally understood the third time she said it, "I _forgot_."

"And that was the whole point," Hadrian reassured her. "This isn't the first time I've had to try and put the pieces back together after an attack where I lost people. Give someone something else to concentrate on, a task to accomplish, and they keep their heads. The entire point was for you to forget for a while." Hadrian hoped that would calm her down.

"You want me to just forget him? What he meant to me?" It seemed he was destined to be disappointed.

"No!" he declared quickly, cutting her off before she could build any more steam, "But I did need you to keep you head until things cooled down. Grieving is fine. Blaming yourself for things you had no control over is not." Lily broke into fresh tears and began to try to apologize and sob at the same time. Hadrian moderated his tone, "It's alright. Been here. Done this. I understand."

He stayed there and held his mother until she cried herself back to sleep. Hoping that was the only nightmare he'd have to deal with for the day, he finally returned to his own room to try and catch a nap.

Just as he was about to fall asleep, he remembered the mess he left in his little brother's room and cursed.

XXXXX

Hadrian drifted toward wakefulness slowly with a dreamy sort of awareness that he was waking up, but no real urgency requiring him to act on the information. Idly, his drifting mind tried to recall the last time he'd been able to just enjoy sleeping in a bit. _The last time must have been back in the Gryffindor dorms with_- Hadrian shot up in bed suddenly wide awake. "Shit!" He turned to the clock, eyes wide and saw that it was just after nine in the evening. _Maybe I can get there in time. _He immediately started throwing his armor on only to stop and stare at the gaping hole in the chest. "Son of a bitch!" Thanks to the peculiarities of undiminished basilisk hide, the armor could be mended easily, but it would still take several hours of work. He was still trying to figure out what to do when Sirius threw open the door to his room bare moments later, wand in hand.

"Har-Hadrian? You alright?" he demanded, eyes searching the room for a threat, Lily right behind him.

"Neville Longbottom's family was attacked sometime tonight. He survived, but his parents were driven insane by Cruciatus exposure. I-" Hadrian tried to explain quickly while digging into his pack for the invisibility cloak before he was cut off.

"That happened last night, Hadrian," Lily said and the dimensional traveler froze. "Professor McGonagall said it's why the Order took so long to respond when Sirius sent for help."

Hadrian felt the bed contact the back of his thighs as he sat down involuntarily, mind running a couple hundred kilometers an hour. "Damn. Damn, damn, damn," he muttered as he franticly tried to calculate what could have caused that particular change in the timeline, but still half relieved that a long nap on his part hadn't cost one of his friends his parents.

"Hadrian?" Lily asked leadingly and he abruptly realized he'd been silent for more than a minute.

"Sorry, Mum," he replied and ran a hand over his much-faded lightning-bolt scar. "I came here with the idea that I knew what I was going to find, but all I can say for sure is that I have no idea what's coming next. In my dimension, Neville's parents were attacked tonight by the Lestrange's and Barty Crouch Junior-" He was interrupted by gasps at that statement.

"You mean the son of the Director of the DMLE is a Death Eater?" his mother demanded incredulously.

"You mean they weren't captured last night?" Hadrian demanded right back.

"No, in all the confusion the Death Eaters slipped away with portkeys keyed into the wards they threw up. Though from what Professor McGonagall had to say, Alice didn't seem to be in as bad a condition as Frank. The healers at St. Mungo's said her prognosis was good."

_Another divergence in the timeline. _It was humbling to realize just how much he didn't know despite everything he'd done to prepare for his trip. "Hopefully they'll be able to help her recover. Maybe in this timeline both Harry and Neville will get to grow up with their mothers."

"Oh, speaking of, thank you for taking care of yourself this afternoon," Lily remarked her tone indicating the somewhat fragile attempt at a joke, "Though next time you'll want to mix the peas with peaches. I'm surprised you managed to get him to eat as much as you did with them by themselves."

Hadrian grimaced despite himself at the thought of that particular gastronomic combination as he got up to follow his mum and Godfather downstairs where a small meal was just about ready to be served. For a long moment, he was tempted to move the conversation back to business. It wasn't as though his list was getting _shorter _while he relaxed. Then he looked around him and reconsidered. After dinner would be soon enough to alter and reinforce the wards, and nothing else was important enough to make him forfeit time with people he'd always withed he had gotten to know or know better.

Still, he couldn't help but frown and consider, _If so many things are different, how much of what I think I know is wrong?_

XXXXX

Not quite as long as the first chapter, nor does it have any real action in it. For those of you who liked the fight scenes in Chapter-the-first and wanted more . . . you'll be waiting a bit. Hopefully the data dump didn't come off as too much. I actually cut Hadrian's monologue short because it seemed like it was taking forever. More alternate history in the next chapter. No discernible progress on SotBP. The Thirty Xanatos Pileup is still kicking my ass.

And that's it for this episode! Please review; it is, after all, the coin of the realm.


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